Being overweight does not make you live less, but it makes you live worse

During the last years we are suffering an epidemic of obesity in the whole world : the figures are alarming , even more so when these two pathologies happen to affect the child population (not in vain, there is already a high number of children who present diseases of adults as the non-alcoholic fatty liver, due to poor diet).

Obesity, according to recent studies, is related to a lower life expectancy due mainly to the pathologies associated with it : heart disease, hypertension, diabetes … However, according to the latest study published on the subject, overweight would not make us live less, although with a worse quality of life and with a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease younger than people with an adequate weight.

Already a meta-analysis published in January 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) came to confirm the fact that being overweight does not shorten life, but it does reduce the quality of it .

What is obesity and what is overweight?

At that time the difficulty was in differentiating between obesity and overweight : finally the following values ​​were established, always taking into account the body mass index of the people who participated in the studies:

Overweight: BMI from 25 to 30

Obesity grade 1: BMI from 30 to 35

Obesity of grades 2 and 3: BMI greater than 35

We must take into account, as we have said before, that the BMI is not a determining factor when establishing whether or not an adult is overweight or obese , since it only takes into account the weight and height of the individual , without looking other important data such as the visceral fat index or the percentage of muscle mass .

Being overweight makes you live longer, but worse

The study published today in JAMA confirms that the mortality rate of overweight people is very similar to that of people who stay at their proper weight, but suffer a greater proportion of their life cardiovascular diseases.

This other study published in 2016 in the Journal of Clinical Medicine makes reference to the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in overweight people: in this study it was concluded that “the results are consistent with studies that indicate an increased risk of chronic diseases in overweight people , and even among those who are in higher values ​​within the range considered normal